Thursday, March 27, 2014

In Part I, game designer Bud Leiser explains how to use the Fibonacci series in system design. In Part II, he shows the grind gap and how the amount of grind can quickly accelerate when using the Fibonacci series.

So what I’ve done now is shown you the flat progression on the left,
so you compare it to the 20% degrade on the right. It makes a huge
difference right? But now we need to compare it to sword costs to know
what kind of effect it will have on our player grind.

Monster

Reward A

*10

Reward B

*10

Difference

Grind Gap

A

5

50

5

50

0

B

10

100

8

80

-20

-2.5

C

15

150

10

104

-46

-4.42308

D

25

250

15

147.2

-102.8

-6.9837

E

40

400

20

200.96

-199.04

-9.90446

F

65

650

28

278.528

-371.472

-13.337

G

105

1050

38

383.5904

-666.41

-17.3729

H

170

1700

53

529.6947

-1170.31

-22.094

I

275

2750

73

730.6281

-2019.37

-27.6388

J

445

4450

101

1008.258

-3441.74

-34.1355

K

720

7200

139

1391.109

-5808.89

-41.7573

L

1165

11650

192

1919.494

-9730.51

-50.6931

M

1885

18850

265

2648.482

-16201.5

-61.1728

N

3050

30500

365

3654.381

-26845.6

-73.4615

O

4935

49350

504

5042.291

-44307.7

-87.8722

Ok so let me explain how I did this so it’s not too confusing for
some of our readers. On the left we had our flat progression if you
remember, so I took that and mulitplied it by 10 to get our weapon cost.
In column 5 I did the same thing to our degraded reward system to see
how much they would make after killing 10 monsters. Then I found the
difference between those numbers to determine the monetary gap. We can
see that the player is definitely falling behind monetarily each step
and will have to grind more and more for each new level of sword. And
finally in the last column I take the amount of money they make from
killing monsters to determine how many more monsters they will need to
kill at each step to earn the next weapon (in addition to the first 10).

So let’s zoom in on that.

Grind Gap

0

-3

-4

-7

-10

-13

-17

-22

-28

-34

-42

-51

-61

-73

-88

Here we can see at that level 1, no problem kill 10 monsters get a
new sword. YAY! Feels pretty fast for the player, which is good they
just started a game we don’t want them to get bored so let’s give them
some quick rewards. Now how about level 2? Oh just 3 more monsters
that’s not bad right? Then just +4 more, then +7, then +10.

Now let’s pause there for a moment; because I feel it’s important.
Remember we started with 10 kills for Sword A. Then we added +3 (13),
then +4 (17), then +7 (24). So by the 4th step we now have to kill 24
monsters to get our next sword this is the point where our beginning
rate doubles (or another way to think about this is progression rate is
50% of our starting rate). The next step however adds +10 (37) so in a
single level we again add 100% compared to our first step! WOW! This is a
really really important thing to understand.

Let’s make sure every reader full grasps this curve that we created.
In the beginning we leveled our sword up very quickly, just 10 kills.
Then it took us 4 steps to double that progression rate. But then in the
5th step it doubles (the base not the current) instantly! This means
that each step after this is going to add a huge amount of grind
(compared to our first level).

So our progression curve still feels pretty good at this point, it
should feel fine and will probably feel fine for a few more levels…. but
it could get out of hand quickly. Let’s see what happens next

+13

+17

+22

This however is an important step, this last step now adds 200% more grind time, compared to our very 1st level. And then it gets steep as hell.

Bud Leiser beat Nintendo’s original Zelda when he was just 3 years old. Then went on to win money and prizes playing: D&D Miniatures, Dreamblade, Magic the Gathering and The Spoils.
He’s just returned from Vietnam where he helped manage Wulven Studios
as their Lead Game Designer. He was responsible for creating internal
projects, game design documents and communicating with clients to help
them succeed in the post-freemium app market.

Friday, March 21, 2014

If you're at GDC2014 today, please join us for the IGDA Game Design SIG Roundtable in the North Hall, Room 114, fom 2:30 - 3:30 PM. Anyone with a GDC pass can participate in the Roundtable. The IGDA sessions are open to people with just Expo passes.

Join students, professionals, academics, and other interested people in discussing the craft of game design and how the IGDA Game Design SIG can move forward in the future.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

In Part I of this article, game designer Bud Leiser explains how to use the Fibonacci series in system design.

In my last article, You are a Game Designer, I dropped a piece of information saying people should learn about the Fibonacci series,
but I didn’t reveal it or why it mattered. The idea of course is that
people who didn’t know it already would go look it up on their own, that
is, if they were serious about game design.

So for those not familiar with it the series is basically:
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 and so on.

Or more importantly (to us) the next integer is the sum of the previous 2 integers.

But why is this important to game designers? Because it’s such a useful and simple way to create a progressive cost system.

Let's Create Game System Together

For example let’s say you wanted to make an RPG and what you really
want is a cost curve so the player can’t buy his weapons too quickly.
You could price each weapon individually, one a time, and finish your
game sometime never. Or you could create a formula that prices each
weapon for you. Fibonacci is great because it scales up very quickly,
creating nice beautiful gaps between costs. So let’s not start with 1 1
2, because…well that’s silly and unnecessary. So let’s start with 50 and
100.

Sword

A

50

Sword

B

100

Sword

C

150

Sword

D

250

Sword

E

400

Sword

F

650

Sword

G

1050

Sword

H

1700

Sword

I

2750

Sword

J

4450

Sword

K

7200

Sword

L

11650

Sword

M

18850

Sword

N

30500

Sword

O

49350

Sword

P

79850

By the way this formula is really simple to setup in Excel
=sum(C1+C2) then extend downwards will automatically populate C2+C3,
C3+C4 and so on.

Notice how quickly the price begins to ramp up? This is really cool
because were talking about 1 type of weapon, the sword. So we probably
don’t want 2 swords to be of similar cost, we want them to have large
power gaps and therefore we want large price gaps. What this doesn’t
tell us at all is how quickly the player will buy them. For that we can
create a new formula based on fighting monsters at his weapon level. So
for example say the player Starts with no sword and kills 10 monsters
before he can buy Sword A. Now he has Sword A and can kill Monster A for
10 gold a piece. This means we have a flat progression system. Every time you kill 10 of a similar level monster you should be able to
afford the next sword, which leads to the next monster which leads to a
new monster that rewards you with 0.10 cost of the next sword.

Whew a lot of words to explain something so lame and boring right? So
let’s say we don’t want that flat progression, what we really want is
for the player to grind a little more each time. So what happens if we
try Fibonacci code *0.8, this means that as each reward value grows it
also decreases by a substantial amount. Let’s see what that looks like
shall we?

Bud Leiser beat Nintendo’s original Zelda when he was just 3 years old. Then went on to win money and prizes playing: D&D Miniatures, Dreamblade, Magic the Gathering and The Spoils.
He’s just returned from Vietnam where he helped manage Wulven Studios
as their Lead Game Designer. He was responsible for creating internal
projects, game design documents and communicating with clients to help
them succeed in the post-freemium app market.

Friday, March 7, 2014

How does a game designer create systems? What are the nuts and bolts of balancing such a system?

Ian Schreiber alluded to the challenges of creating balanced systems in his articles on Pacing and Bud Leiser mentioned in his article, You Are A Game Designer, that the "mysterious" job of game design may include wrangling with Excel spreadsheets. For would-be designers, system design may be one of those big mysteries.

I welcome articles on the topic. As always, submission guidelines along with submission procedure can be found on the right hand side of the blog. Topic suggestions and articles are appreciated!
Some questions: